by Tom Berreman
“Do you think he has any idea what you are really up to?”
“No, I’m pretty sure I’ve convinced him that I’m just concerned I will be implicated in something I had nothing to do with, and that I’m also trying to protect him if this disaster would ever become public.”
“You took copies I assume.”
“Of course, right here in my brief case.”
Fitzgerald looked in his rear view mirror and saw the approaching headlights of a large vehicle. Even though the sun had just set in the western sky and dusk was slowly turning to night the lights were on high beam, making it difficult to identify the type of vehicle.
“Listen Carl, give me a second. Some asshole with his high beams on is coming up fast behind me and I don’t like driving with one hand.”
The vehicle with the bright lights was gaining on him quickly when the driver signaled his intent to pass and pulled into the left lane. There was little traffic this time of day so Fitzgerald thought nothing of the driver’s decision to pass.
When the dark blue Ford Crown Victoria was alongside Fitzgerald’s car it slowed and pulled hard to the right. Fitzgerald panicked and dropped his cell phone onto the passenger seat, but it was too late for defensive maneuvers. His light sports car was no match for the large sedan forcing him off the road. All he could hear were the high pitched screech of metal against metal and the sound of gravel kicking up as he was forced onto the shoulder. As hard as Fitzgerald tried he couldn’t keep his BMW on the road.
The course sound of gravel hitting the wheel wells was replaced by the eerily hushed sound caused by Fitzgerald’s BMW crashing through the underbrush as its momentum forced it straight down a steep roadside embankment. The last thing he saw was a grove of mature oak trees approaching fast.
The driver of the Crown Victoria pulled onto the shoulder and threw the transmission into park. His passenger got out of the car and jogged down the shoulder to where Fitzgerald’s car left the road. The BMW had crashed directly into a large oak, and the light, two seat sports car had crumpled into an unrecognizable hunk of white sheet metal. After a moment the small flames under the hood ignited the gasoline flowing from the ruptured fuel tank and what was left of the car burst into flames.
Convinced no one could have survived the crash he returned to his vehicle as he had another mission to execute.
* * *
John Smith parked in the driveway of his Georgetown townhouse and turned off the ignition, pausing for a moment as he pondered his meeting with Fitzgerald. He sighed in frustration, pulled his brief case from the back seat and walked slowly up the sidewalk leading to his front door. He was deep in thought, troubled, distracted, agreeing that much of what Fitzgerald had said was true.
As he approached his front door he was caught off guard by the man who had sneaked up behind him. The man reached his left arm over Smith’s shoulder and held his hand tightly over his mouth as he thrust the needle of a syringe into the right side of his neck. The man pushed the syringe’s plunger slowly and steadily, releasing a strong sedative into Smith’s veins. The last thing Smith remembered was the image of the full moon rising just over the roof of his townhouse before he collapsed onto the sidewalk.
Chapter 6.
Maria Hernandez was close to the end of her shift at the Omni Hotel. She was anxious to get home before three o’clock as she didn’t like Isabella to be alone when she returned home from school. She knocked on the door to Room 606, the last room to clean before punching out and going home to great her daughter.
“Housekeeping,” she said. Getting no response she unlocked the door with her master key and opened it slightly.
Finding the room dark and empty she entered and turned on the lights, surprised to find a clean, made up room. The new girl at the front desk had failed to notify the maid staff of any vacancies, and unexpectedly Maria’s shift was over. As she turned to leave she noticed the connecting door to Room 605, that when opened from both rooms allowed a multi-room suite, was ajar. She went to close it, but paused when she heard voices.
Maria pushed the door open just enough to peak into the adjacent room. The shades were drawn and only the lamp on the nightstand was lit, creating an ominous setting. She saw two men standing in front of a third man seated in a desk chair, his back to her, his arms and legs bound with duct tape to the arms and legs of the chair. The man in the chair had blonde hair and wore a large, gold ring on his right hand.
“Now tell us where the disc is,” said the taller of the two men standing, an African American man who wore his hair in a retro, Afro style.
“I have no idea what y’all are talking about,” the man bound to the chair responded.
“I heard your entire conversation with Fitzgerald, thanks to the bug I planted on the shelf above your booth,” said the shorter of the two men, the man who had nursed the long neck Budweiser at the roadhouse bar. “And you want to know the funny part? I knew where you guys were meeting and where to plant the bug because I picked up your plan on the very same bug in your office you were trying to avoid.”
“It’s a federal offense to bug a United States’ Senator’s office!”
“Yeah…, whatever. You told Fitzgerald you took one of the discs and will keep it until Don changes the second phase of the operation. Does that help jog your memory?”
The man in the chair simply stared at his captor, contempt in his eyes.
Frustrated by a lack of response the man with the glass eye reared back and slapped the man bound to the chair. As he followed through with his swing he looked in the general direction of the door connecting to Room 606, not noticing it was ajar. Maria froze, and all she could focus on was his eye.
* * *
The Thai doctor had done his best to insert a glass eye and repair the eye socket shattered by the blow from a three inch lead pipe during a back alley assault in the seediest section of Bangkok. John Lehman, the victim of the lead pipe assault, was a CIA operative experienced in deep undercover operations until his cover in Thailand was blown by a woman he thought he loved. The disfigurement and loss of sight in his left eye forced him to retire from the CIA, but he continued to do freelance work for those willing to pay the right price.
For several years following the incident Lehman wore a black eye patch to cover his disfigurement. But eventually he quit wearing the patch, not really caring that people might stare, even though he occasionally scared young children.
He often hired Toby Davis, a freelance explosives expert who favored a retro Afro hair style, to assist him. Davis’ knowledge of explosive technology, learned when he worked road construction in the Colorado Rockies, was sometimes useful in carrying out his assignments. Davis was also a former NASCAR driver, banned from the sport for his propensity to run competitors off the track, and his driving skills were often valuable as well.
Lehman and Davis had grown up together in a foster home in a rough part of South Los Angeles, and were as close as blood brothers. Their foster parents were loving people but were unable to keep the boys from the lure of the streets. They began with petty crimes as juveniles, then went on to burglaries and car theft. A botched liquor store robbery in which Davis shot and wounded the clerk landed him in prison after being tried as an adult. For his part as an accomplice Lehman was sentenced only to probation and community service as he was tried as a juvenile, but the experience affected him enough to clean up his act. He finished high school, went to college on an ROTC scholarship and spent eight years as a lieutenant in the Army Special Forces before joining the CIA.
* * *
“I’m gonna give you one more chance to save your sorry ass,” Lehman continued as he returned his attention to the man bound to the chair, having not noticed Maria eaves dropping on his interrogation. “Tell me where you put the disc or your veins are goin’ to get a little shot of this.”
He reached to the table next to the bed and picked up a syringe, put it close to the prisoner’s face and pushed the plunger in a q
uarter of an inch. A small amount of clear liquid shot out of the miniscule opening at the end of the needle into the prisoner’s eye, causing him to squint, then look defiantly into his captor’s eyes. The syringe contained potassium chloride, an overdose of which can cause, among other things, cardiac conduction blocks, fibrillation and arrhythmias. A heart attack. Their plan was to induce a mild heart attack, causing him to panic, and they would refuse to call 911 until he told them where he had hidden the disc. Their orders were that he should not be harmed in any way.
“With that bad ticker of yours, when they find you dead it will look like nothing but a plain old garden variety heart attack.”
“Y’all can go to hell,” the man replied.
Maria, mesmerized by what was taking place in the next room, continued to watch, despite being in harm’s way if the men noticed her.
“Have it your way asshole,” Lehman said as he poked the syringe into the man’s arm and slowly pushed the plunger all the way to the end, releasing a full dose into the prisoner’s blood stream. After twenty seconds the man began to shake violently, his movements constricted by the duct tape, then he went limp, his head falling to the right, resting on his shoulder.
Pausing for a moment Lehman placed two fingers on the side of the man’s neck.
“Shit,” he said, a somber tone in his voice. “He’s dead.”
“That dose wasn’t supposed to be enough to kill him,” Davis said, “just to scare him.”
“I know…, I know,” Lehman responded, panic beginning to enter his voice. He had diluted the solution two parts water to one part potassium chloride, instead of ten to one as he had been instructed, and he may have blown their only chance to recover the missing disc.
Maria gasped slightly, pausing for a moment to cross herself as she had just witnessed the death of another human being, and retreated into Room 606. She did not shut the door between the rooms to avoid any noise that might alert the men of her presence. She quickly moved to the hallway and pushed her housekeeping cart as fast as it would go toward the elevator to escape undetected. But the men in Room 605 heard the squeaky wheel on her cart.
“Damn, now what?” Davis asked as he poked his head out of the door to investigate. Seeing Maria nearly running down the hall he started to chase after her just as a woman emerged from her room half way between Room 605 and the elevator. Davis stopped, acting as nonchalant as he could, making eye contact with Maria as the elevator doors closed between them. He retreated to the safety of the hotel room, his first priority to keep a low profile.
“Damn it,” he said as he reentered the hotel room and noticed the door to the adjoining room ajar. As they were dragging their prisoner into the hotel room he had grabbed onto the door knob in a futile attempt to escape their grasp, and had opened the door slightly without his captors noticing.
“What?” asked Lehman.
“Look at this,” he said as he pulled open the door, seeing that the door from the adjoining room was also ajar. “That maid I just saw in the hall was in a hurry, like she saw something she shouldn’t. If she was in the next room she might have seen and heard everything, including us killing--”
“Well don’t just stand there,” Lehman interrupted, “let’s get her!”
Chapter 7.
When Maria reached the lobby she abandoned her cart in a hallway leading to the hotel’s office, not taking the time to punch out or tell her supervisor she was leaving for the day. She hurried out the front door and crossed the street to a city park. She found a deserted section of the park, pulled Jason Burke’s business card and her cell phone from her purse and dialed his office number.
Jason made the mistake of answering his phone.
“Mr. Burke, this is Maria Hernandez. We met at the legal clinic on Tuesday, you helped me with my landlord, and you said to call you if I ever needed help. Do you remember me?”
“Of course I do Maria. Is there a problem? The unlawful detainer hearing isn’t until next Wednesday,” Jason said halfheartedly. His desktop was barely visible to those passing by his office, piled with a foot high stack of random files, assorted papers scattered in no ascertainable order and a half dozen empty Starbucks’ cups. He was juggling several conflicting deadlines for his paying clients and had little time to dedicate to his pro bono client.
“No, no, no. It’s not that,” she replied, her adrenaline causing her to speak fast in her heavy accent. “I just saw a man get killed, and I know of no one else to call. I was cleaning a room, and the door to the next room was open, and two men, they had a man strapped to a chair, and--”
“Whoa…, whoa…, slow down Maria,” Jason interrupted. He paused to find an unused legal pad, a monumental effort given the haphazard pile of paper and files on his desk. “Now…, let’s start at the beginning. You were at work at the Omni Hotel?”
“Yes.”
“And you saw a man strapped to a chair?”
“Yes, with duct tape. He was in Room 605, and I was cleaning Room 606, but the doors between the rooms were open just a little bit, just enough for me to see into the room.”
“What did the man in the chair look like?” Jason asked as he tried to write down everything she said.
“I couldn’t see his face, his back was to me. But he had blonde hair, and he had a big gold ring on his right hand. They keep asking him where the disc was. He said he had no idea what they were talking about…, he even told them to go to hell…, and he talk funny, like the men that talk in Gone With the Wind, that is my daughter’s favorite movie.”
“A southern accent?” Jason asked.
Maria didn’t respond as she didn’t understand the concept.
“Then they threaten him with a needle if he don’t tell them where the disc is.”
“A needle?”
“Yeah, you know, like a shot at the doctor.”
“Oh, a syringe,” Jason said with a sigh. “Did they say anything about what was on the disc?”
“No, just that a disc was missing, and that they think he take it.”
“What did the two men look like?”
“One was tall, black, with really bushy hair. The other, he was shorter, and his left eye was…, how you say…, deformed? He had a glass eye, and…, oh no! The man with the glass eye, he see me, he is coming, I must run.”
John Lehman had spotted Maria and was walking toward her across the park at a quick pace. She turned to run, but had failed to notice Toby Davis standing directly behind her.
“Who y’all talkin’ to?” Davis asked, noticing Maria stuffing Jason’s business card into her pocket. His question went unanswered, his only response a look of terror on Maria’s face.
“Y’all comin’ with me,” he said as he harshly grabbed Maria’s upper arm, causing her to drop her cell phone. After smashing her cell phone with the heal of his boot he reached inside her pocket and pulled out Jason’s business card.
“Damn, a fuckin’ lawyer,” was all he said as he forcefully lead her toward the alley behind the hotel.
* * *
All Jason could hear on the line was static. He pushed the redial button and received a recording that his call could not be connected as dialed. He now faced a terrible dilemma.
Appeal briefs for two of his best corporate clients were due to be filed with the court by the close of business today. But he just received a call from an undocumented, pro bono client who claims to have witnessed a murder and who may also be in jeopardy. He really had no choice, he couldn’t just drop everything to assist Maria, his commitment to the firm’s clients came first. But the least he could do was to call the police.
“Seventh precinct,” was all the officer answering the phone said.
“Hello, my name is Jason Burke, I’m an attorney with Chatfield & Smythe. One of my pro bono clients, a maid at the Omni Hotel, just called me and claimed she witnessed a murder in room 606 of the hotel. She tried to escape but the two men she saw commit the murder chased her, then her call went dead.”<
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Jason went on to tell the officer everything Maria had told him, including the general descriptions of the men she saw.
“I’ll get a patrol over there as soon as I can, but we’re a bit short staffed today, it might take a little while.”
“That’s the best you can do?” Jason asked, disappointed that the police officer didn’t express a sense of urgency. “A man may have been murdered, and I think my client is in danger.”
“We’ll do the best we can.”
“Thanks,” was all Jason said, then he hung up the phone. He would work diligently to get the briefs finished and filed with the court, then do whatever he could to get to the bottom of Maria’s phone call.
Tom Berreman was born and raised in the twin cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota. He attended the University of Minnesota, earning a BSB in Accounting and an MBA in Finance from the Carlson School of Management. Following graduation, he joined the audit staff of an international public accounting firm and was awarded his Certified Public Accountant certificate. After seven years in accounting and finance he entered law school in a part-time, evening program while continuing his professional career, earning his JD, magna cum laude, from William Mitchell College of Law in Saint Paul. After a thirty three year career in business, finance and law he bought a small house near the water in Panama City Beach, Florida and spends his time writing.